Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Open-Source Cloud Taking Strong Hold

Open-Source Cloud Taking Strong Hold

Open Source cloud computing is becoming increasingly more pervasive and is fueling cloud adoption, a recent survey conducted by a trio of cloud vendors recently revealed.

The survey of more than 500 IT pros found that 69 percent use open-source software whenever possible in their cloud computing environments, while just three percent claim to not use open-source software at all. Additionally, all government cloud users said they use some form of open-source cloud software. The survey was conducted by open-source cloud software provider Cloud.com, cloud hosting provider BitRock, and cloud management player Zenoss

The survey also revealed that the open-source Linux operating system is the dominant guest OS in the cloud, with 83 percent of IT pros queried saying they plan to deploy Linux as a guest OS, while 66 percent will be deploying Windows OSes in the cloud.

Meanwhile, among the users who do not use open-source software, 58 percent of them said they have no cloud computing strategy, the survey revealed.

Along with highlighting the use of open-source in the cloud, the Cloud.com, BitRock and Zenoss survey also found that 61 percent of organizations are currently in the information gathering and planning stages, or have received approval for, but have not yet implemented, a cloud computing strategy. Twenty percent have already implemented cloud, while another 20 percent have no cloud plans at this point.

As for what's driving cloud adoption, 68 percent said hardware savings was the No. 1 reason for moving to the cloud, while 66 percent said faster deployment of infrastructure and 57 percent said reducing systems management burden was their cloud catalyst. Among the CTOs surveyed, 71 percent said scalability was the most popular reason for adopting cloud computing, which was followed by 61 percent citing elasticity or the need to adjust fluctuating resource demands.

Further, the survey revealed that most data center managers prefer private or dedicated cloud infrastructure in favor of public cloud infrastructure. The survey found that 70 percent of data center managers choose to deploy infrastructure on dedicated resources like dedicated server and data center resources, while 12 percent prefer to deploy their infrastructure in the public cloud. Additionally, 57 percent of participants said they preferred to host their infrastructure on their own hardware; and 36 percent of respondents indicated that their preference was to run their infrastructure virtually but hosted on dedicated hardware at a managed data center.